IT Resource

Microsoft are releasing more snippets of information about the forthcoming Window 7 edition. Here are a few of the promised highlights that relate to IT professionals:

Manageability

• Windows 7 will extend the reach of what Group Policy can manage, and how settings are applied to specific users or computers, including non-GP aware components.
• Windows 7 will introduce DirectAccess, a capability that allows IT to manage and update internet-connected remote PCs, even when they are off the corporate network, while giving mobile users seamless secure connectivity while on the road without having to open a VPN connection.
• The new Powershell v2 and its graphical editor will help automate repetitive tasks with minimal scripting expertise required.

Security and Compliance

• Windows 7 will provide customisable User Account Control (UAC) that allows IT to “tune” the UAC feature based on their environment.
• For data protection, Windows 7 introduces BitLocker To Go, extending encryption to removable drives. This feature gives greater control over information leaving the corporation, as well as protecting lost or stolen USB drives.
• Windows 7 will also allow greater control of access to specific applications by specific users

Deployment

In Windows 7, system image creation and deployment is enhanced with advances such as Dynamic Driver provisioning, the Deployment Image Service and Management tool, Multicast Multiple Stream Transfer, and improvements to user state migration. 
 

Microsoft offically launches the Small Business Server and Essential Business Server products in Australia today (12th November), so here are some handy details of the two products:

These integrated sever packages aimed specifically at small and medium sized business and provide depoyment, management and security solutions.

Windows Small Business Server 2008

For small businesses running fewer than 75 PCs. Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 runs multiple technologies, which are integrated and configured specifically for small business needs:

• Access to e-mail contacts, calendar and files from anywhere
• Increased reliability of hardware and software
• Internal Web sites for rich collaboration
• Lower costs through easier installation and management
• Better protection with automatic backups and file restoration

Windows Essential Business Server 2008

For mid-sized business. Essential Business Server offers:

• Secure remote access to e-mail, files, and applications
• Streamlined administration console for all included technologies
• Preconfigured platform to Microsoft Best Practices
• Simple, wizard-based setup of key workloads
• Centralised, easy-to-use license management tools

 You can find out more via the Microsoft Webcast: here

An interesting post on MaximumPC sheds some light on the reasons why the Microsoft Vista rollout process was flawed. It includes some benchmarks testing between XP, Vista and Vista SP1, plus some feedback from Microsoft staff giving an insight into how the problems arose and what’s being done.

Of course, it basically boils down to an underdone release, made too early with inadequate co-operation between Microsoft and driver manufacturers. The article lists 7 major areas where the release really failed: 

Instability

At launch, Vista was much less stable than XP, and the problems weren’t limited to high-end hardware - users with low-end & standard setups also reported instability. Considering that improved stability was one of the biggest promises Microsoft made for Vista, users were understandably upset.

Incompatibility

If a desktop application didn’t follow Vista’s rules for behavior, Vista wouldn’t let it run. The program would fail to load, crash on use, or eat the user’s data, depending on the development infraction. This even affected such mainsrteam programs as Acrobat Reader, iTunes, Trillian, and dozens of others.

Hardware incompatibilities could be just as challenging, and Vista also shipped without support from major VPN manufacturers, including Cisco.

The sheer number and range of compatibility problems meant that every user would be affected in some way.

Performance

New OS releases can suffer from performance issues – but Vista showed dramatic degradation in performance on release. This poor performance affected even the most common of tasks.

User Account Control

Vista brought  improvements in the overall security of Windows, but one of the mechanisms that helps enable that security comes at a high cost – it’s incredibly annoying.

User Account Control, or UAC. Even if you don’t know what it’s called, if you’ve used Vista, you’ve used UAC. It prompts you whenever an app tries to write to an area of your hard disk or registry that Windows finds suspicious. This seems like a good thing but UAC prompts every time the installer does something suspicious. A problem compounded by the fact that each prompt looks and behaves differently, even though they’re all asking for basically the same thing.

To make matters worse, none of the UAC prompts tell users what the application is trying to do. When you click that Allow button, you still don’t know what it is you’re agreeing to.

Activation

Activation was introduced with Windows XP, and Vista activation includes the Windows Genuine Advantage software, which periodically checks in with Microsoft to ensure that the copy of Windows you’ve already activated remains genuine. WGA isn’t foolproof though, and it can be easily confused by something like a BIOS reset.

Version Overload

In the good old days, there were two distinct versions of Windows: one for home users and one for corporate users. For home, you bought Windows 98; IT departments bought Windows NT. With Windows XP, this trend continued, despite the fact that both the home and enterprise versions used the same core.

With Vista, Microsoft added three more versions of Windows, removing crucial features from the low-end release and forcing power users who want access to both work-related and enthusiast features to shell out for the $400 Ultimate edition.  The upgrade path from XP was also inflexible and expensive.

‘One More Thing’

To put it bluntly – Vista didn’t come with any ‘killer’ apps or new features.
 

The full article can be read  here

Microsoft has released a new beta test version of IE8, stating that this version comes with new features to enhance privacy, ease-of-use, and security.

Beta 1 of IE 8 was released in March, but that was aimed at letting web developers take a first look at the new browser. This latest version is aimed at a broader consumer audience.

Although there is no official release date for IE8 as of yet, Microsoft has pledged to deliver more regular updates of Internet Explorer, whose lead has been chipped away by Mozilla’s Firefox browser. It released Internet Explorer 7 in October 2006.

The latest version of Internet Explorer boasts features found in Firefox 3, including a “smart” address bar that remembers and redirects user to website addresses they have visited before.

IE 8 will also offer a mode called “InPrivate Browsing,” which ensures that history, temporary internet files and cookies are not recorded on a user’s PC.

A new security feature that allows a user to block content coming from third-parties trying to track and aggregate the user’s online behavior will also be available.

Microsoft has also updated features such as “Activities” which allows a user to use information found on one page (e.g. an address) in conjunction with online services such as mapping, without leaving the original site.

The latest test release of Internet Explorer 8 can be found at www.microsoft.com/ie8

The infamous Microsoft “Blue Screen Of Death”, or BSOD, can of course have many causes, some of which can be fixed up with a reboot. Other BSOD errors may signify a more serious issue related to Drivers, memory or other factors.

Listed below are a few of the most common Error messages that accompany a BSOD, together with explanations of what they may mean.

The error messages take the form of an 8-character hexidecimal code (the last eight characters in the ‘STOP’ message code).

 
STOP: 0×0000000A
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
Indicates that a kernel-mode process or driver attempted to access a memory location it did not have permission to access, or a memory location that exists at a kernel interrupt request level (IRQL) that was too high (a kernel-mode process can only access other processes that have an IRQL that’s equal to or lower than its own).

 
STOP: 0×0000001E
KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
The Windows XP kernel detected an illegal or unknown processor instruction. The problems that cause this error can be either software or hardware related and result from invalid memory and access violations, which are intercepted by the Windows default error handler if error-handling routines are not present in the code  itself.

 
STOP: 0×00000024
NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM
Indicates that a problem occurred within Ntfs.sys, the driver file that allows the system to read and write to drives formatted with the NTFS file system. (A similar Stop message, 0×00000023, exists for the file allocation table [FAT16 or FAT32)] file systems).

 
STOP: 0×00000050
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
The requested data was not in memory. The system generates an exception error when using a reference to an invalid system memory address. Defective memory (including main memory, L2 RAM cache, video RAM) or incompatible software may cause this error.

 
STOP: 0×0000007B
INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE
Windows XP has lost access to the system partition or boot volume during the startup process. Incorrect device drivers typically cause this error although it can also indicate a possible virus infection.

 
STOP: 0×0000007F
UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP
A hardware problem e.g. resulting from mismatched or defective memory, a malfunctioning CPU, or a fan failure that’s causing overheating.

 
STOP: 0×0000009F
DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE
Indicates that a driver is in an inconsistent or invalid power state. This error typically occurs during events that involve power state transitions, such as shutting down or moving in or out of standby or hibernate mode.

 
STOP: 0×000000D1
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
The system attempted to access pageable memory using a kernel process IRQL that was too high. Typical cause is a bad device driver (one that uses improper addresses) although it can also be caused by faulty or mismatched RAM or a damaged pagefile.

 
STOP: 0×000000EA
THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER
A device driver problem is causing the system to pause indefinitely. Typically, this problem is caused by a display driver waiting for the video hardware to enter an idle state. This might point to a hardware problem with the video adapter or a faulty video driver.

 
STOP: 0xC0000218
UNKNOWN_HARD_ERROR
A required registry hive file could not be loaded. The file may be corrupt or missing. The registry file may have been corrupted due to hard disk corruption or some other hardware problem. A driver may have corrupted the registry data while loading into memory or the memory where the registry is loading may have a parity error.

 
STOP: 0xC0000221
STATUS_IMAGE_CHECKSUM_MISMATCH
Driver, system file, or disk corruption problems (such as a damaged paging file). Faulty memory hardware can also cause this message to appear.

The August upate from Microsoft is likely to contain a number of critical and major fixes.

The update will include seven items rated as ‘critical’, the highest of Microsoft’s security alert levels. All of these will address issues that may allow an attacker to remotely execute code on a targeted system.

Four of the critical fixes relate to Office issues, one addresses critical flaws in Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003, another fixes a critical issue in Windows Media Player while the last addresses a critical vulnerability in Internet Explorer.

Also planned are five fixes rated as ‘important’. The patches include two remote code execution flaws in Windows and one in Office. The other two updates address information disclosure vulnerabilities found in Windows Messenger, Outlook Express and Windows itself.

The company plans to release the update on Tuesday 12th August. The release will also include non-security updates for the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool and the Windows Update, Microsoft Update and Software Update Services

Microsoft is proceeding with plans to stop selling the Windows XP operating system to retailers and major computer as from June 30th.

Once major manufacturers such as Dell and HP have cleared their stocks of machines loaded with XP, then new machines will only be issued with Vista, and anyone wishing to revert to XP will have to buy Vista Ultimate or Vista Business and then legally “downgrade” to XP.

Smaller PC makers will be allowed to buys XP for resale through til January 2009. Cut down versions of XP will also remain available for use on machines such as the Asus Eee PC.

The decision comes despite vociferous protests from large numbers of people unhappy with Vista and amid calls for XP to be kept on-line until the release of the next Windows version 7, pencilled in for sometime in 2009.

Last week, Microsoft said it would provide full technical support for Windows XP through 2009, and limited support through 2014.

IBM has built the biggest ever dual-boot Windows/Linux HPC system for a consortium of Swedish research groups and universities.

The record-chasing firm will apparently unveil its 5,376 Intel Xeon quad-core processor blade system later on today. Computer World claims the system is able to reach an impressive 46 sustained teraflops on a beta version of Windows HPC Server 2008, with each chip apparently running at 2.5GHz and using 50 watts.

What makes the achievement particularly noteworthy is the fact that it is a relative rarity for an HPC system to be built on Windows rather than exclusively on Linux, which makes up around 85 percent of all HPC systems in the world.

Microsoft has long been interested in catching up with its rivals in the HPC field, and mow it looks like it might finally be making inroads.

The mega computer, which sits in the Umea University, about 680km north of Stockholm, is amongst the top 50 most powerful machines currently in existence.

Microsoft has made available the latest version of its Open XML software developer kit, a package designed to make it easier for developers to create client and server solutions using the OpenXML format.

Included in the SDK are a number of APIs that can be used to manipulate formats, as well as how-to documentation and sample codes.

Microsoft has also delivered some information about its future roadmap, explaining that the next version, 2, will be out late summer, and will contain components from the Open XML API architecture.

Meanwhile Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela have this week appealed against the decision to fast-track the international standardisation of Microsoft’s OpenXML.

OpenXML has been subjected to intense debate already, but was ratified by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) in April. Although it is already backed by a large number of countries, it will now be put back on hold while the appeal is decided on.

Microsoft has released its Windows Search 4 to the web, updating its Vista, XP, Server 2003 and Windows Home Server offerings.

Microsoft said that this release followed an earlier preview that was downloaded some 300,000 times and has resulted in a lot of feedback, and as a result, a number of quality improvements.

One improved area is the system’s ability to search across machines. Windows Search 4′s remote discovery service will now let users run data queries between Vista and XP machines, for example.

For now Windows Search 4 is available to download from the Microsoft web site, however, in the future it will be included in the Windows Update service as an option, the firm said.

Microsoft said on Tuesday it plans to test-release a feature-complete version of its Internet Explorer 8 Web browser in August.

Microsoft released a first test version of IE 8 in March, providing developers and Web designers a preview of the latest update to the world’s most widely-used browser.

The next test release, IE 8 Beta 2, will be targeted more at ordinary Web users. It will come with all the features that the browser will have when it is officially launched — although it may still contain bugs, since it is a test version.

Microsoft has not set an official release date for IE 8.

Microsoft Corp. is offering customers greater choice and more flexibility among document formats, as well as creating additional opportunities for developer and competitors, by expanding the range of document formats supported in its flagship Office productivity suite.

The 2007 Microsoft Office system already provides support for 20 different document formats within Microsoft Office Word, Office Excel and Office PowerPoint. With the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) scheduled for the first half of 2009, the list will grow to include support for XML Paper Specification (XPS), Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.5, PDF/A and Open Document Format (ODF) v1.1.

When using SP2, customers will be able to open, edit and save documents using ODF and save documents into the XPS and PDF fixed formats from directly within the application without having to install any other code. It will also allow customers to set ODF as the default file format for Office 2007. To also provide ODF support for users of earlier versions of Microsoft Office (Office XP and Office 2003), Microsoft will continue to collaborate with the open source community in the ongoing development of the Open XML-ODF translator project on SourceForge.net.
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For personalized flair, the LifeCam VX-5000 features a brightly colored ring around the front of the webcam in the colors Cool Blue, Lucky Green and Fire Red, allowing consumers to choose their favorite to suit their style. To complement the fresh, new look, the LifeCam VX-5000 features MSN Photo Swap, a special feature that lets consumers share digital photos in midvideo conversation and see real-time reactions as both callers view the pictures. The new webcam arrives just in time to help share summer vacation memories and keep consumers connected throughout the year.

“With the LifeCam VX-5000 we are changing the perception of webcams from boring and bulky to fun and flexible,” said Michael Cowan, product marketing manager for the Hardware Division at Microsoft. “We designed this LifeCam to match the experience its technology delivers — it’s all about fun and letting consumers share their personalities.”
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Microsoft has given advanced notification of four security patches in this month’s Patch Tuesday on 13 May.

The update will include fixes for vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office, Windows and OneCare.

Three of the vulnerabilities have been rated ‘critical’, Microsoft’s highest security level. A fourth was rated ‘moderate’.

Two of the critical flaws lie in Microsoft Office. Versions affected include Office XP, 2000, 2003 and 2007. The 2004 and 2008 versions of Office for the Mac will receive patches for critical flaws.

The third critical fix will be applied to a flaw in Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003. Barring a last-minute addition, Vista and Server 2008 will not be affected by the update.

The lone ‘moderate’ fix will apply to security products Windows Live Onecare, Windows Defender, Microsoft Antigen, Forefront Security and Standalone System Sweeper.

More information can be found on Microsoft’s Website.

Microsoft has warned users updating to Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) that they won’t be able to downgrade from Internet Explorer 7 to the older IE6 without uninstalling the service pack.

The warning first appeared in a post Monday to a company blog written by the Internet Explorer development team. Microsoft released Windows XP SP3 to Windows Update as an optional download Tuesday.

“If you choose to install XP SP3, Internet Explorer 7 will remain on your system after the install is complete,” said Jane Maliouta, an IE program manager, in the blog entry. “Your preferences will be retained. However, you will no longer be able to uninstall IE7. If you go to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, the Remove option will be grayed out.”
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